so ive already been home for a week and a half but wanted to post these pictures now that i'm ready to do it. i was really sad to leave rome but now i'm ready to post some pictures from our goodbye dinner at la limonaia. i'm not going to write an entry with this one cause it'll make me too sad. but here are the pictures anyway.





































and of course i got stuck in london overnight which was an absolute nightmare. and as much as it was awful and the worst experience in my life, it was still a free night in london in a swank hotel room that cost 200 pounds a night. here are some pictures of my hotel room.













ok well i guess thats it for this blog. i made this specifically for my semester abroad and that's over now. so...that's it.

as jesse's last day, she and i went out on the town to do some touristy stuff. we took the bus to the bookstore to sell back our books and then, from there, walked to la bocca della verità. it was a bit farther than we expected but we still got there on time and got to take a picture with it. there we are.


after, we decided we were hungry and improvised a bit and headed over to l'archetto, the spaghetteria. yeah we know it was lunch time, but it was our last meal out together and i found it only appropriate that we were both having the chanel spaghetti at l'archetto. after feeling like complete fatties, we walked down to the colosseum to see it one last time and to see the tree out there. here's a picture of it.


after, we took a stroll up via del corso to hit up a few stores and then came home so that i could turn in my paper and movie and chill with our other roommate. i don't have any pictures from last night mostly cause we were mostly just chillin and packing but it definitely was really sad. i said goodbye to my roommate this morning around 640 when her cab got here. i tried really hard not to cry, but i couldn't really help it. i'm also not worried cause i have no doubt in my mind that ill get to see my roomate again.

as for tonight, IES is throwing us a going away dinner at la limonaia...the place we all had our first lunch together. i'm excited to see everyone for the last time and to have an amazing 20 course dinner as IES always gives us. woot for being a fatty on your last day in rome.

sunday night a big group of us headed out to the olympic stadium to watch the soccer game. this weekend, AS Roma played Palermo. the game was so so much fun especially since Rome kicked ass and they REALLY don't like sicilians. there's nick and justin outside of the stadium.


and this is some pregame fire.


here's a picture of me, steph, and melissa at the game.


and here are the two teams all lined up before the game started.


this is the game now in action.


this is the palermo section. they were given a small section in the corner and were instructed to stay in their seats after the game ended and all of the roma fans were gone. there were all kinds of things being thrown including fires and firecrackers.


this is now the palermo section after palermo almost scored. the riot police showed up and did not leave.


this is one of the fire bombs thrown into the palermo section.


there is some guy in front of us flipping off the palermo section after we scored.


melissa and justin with their goal faces.


steph and me.


waving the flag after we scored.


domenico. i forget exactly what his comment was on this photo but it had something to do with getting little sleep, taking drugs, and then getting hit by the ugly hippy stick.


theres stephanie with the field.


penalty kick where totti scored. woot.


this is me and my roommate at the game.


and this is the crowd singing "grazie roma" after we won.


gotta love the calcio<3

i thoroughly enjoy IES people and IES Rome.

we headed out to the vatican to do some souvenir shopping and see the square for the last time before heading back to the united states. the square was really cute esp since they erected a tree that is almost as tall as the obelisk. here are some pictures of the square and jesse and me in it.




so then we took the train to piazza di spagna and saw this cute little choir of italian children singing english christmas carols with accents and messing up some of the words. so cute though.


so then last night we started in the apartment and then headed out to cheap bar to meet all the other IES people. here are some pictures of us in our apartment.




and at the bus stop.



on the bus.



in piazza navona.


at cheap bar.
















rock castle.






after rock castle, meredith, lauren, jesse, and me headed out to club sin in testaccio and had a friggin blast. there were a bunch of IES people there that we ended up hanging out with and meeting all these italian people too. i dont have any pictures from sin...but it was quite a good time. as per usual, i fell down the stairs...so we all know the night was complete.

so thursday night was valerio's birthday which coincided with the first night of our last weekend in rome. so being that these two things were happening and, on top of that, everyone was pretty much finished with finals, we all headed out to a club called cosmopolitan. it was so so fun especially since we didnt have to pay cover since it was valerio's birthday. here are some pictures from the apartment before we left to hit up cheap bar to get cheap drinks.

collin and me...one of us has asian glow one of us not so much.


emily and me.


my three girls showing me their bums.


the 4 of us smiling.


apparently im the only one smiling here.


and here's a silly picture of the four of us.


and there's some roomie love.

so on saturday night when we returned from prague, jesse, collin, emily, and i all headed out for dinner and a fun, early night...since collin and i were pretty much exhausted

here are some pictures from dinner. we went to one of our favorite restaurants called l'archetto which is a spaghetteria. granted, they have other food too but theyre most known for their like 60 or more different kinds of spaghetti.

first this is jesse and emily showing off their azn pryde.


and then this is my and collin's reaction. (what are they doing?!)


and then a second try at our reaction (what do they want from us?)


and this is a picture of the four of us...our tuesday night cheesy 90s movie and dinner crew.


After dinner, we hit up piazza navona cause of their cute little christmas carnival.

this is jesse and emily with one of the huge bears.


there's jesse on the carousel. thats right, we TOTALLY rode the carousel that sits in piazza navona. and of course i chose the biggest horse on the ride and had so much trouble climbing on.


that's faux dancing grandma who was outside of the bar.


and jesse getting her turn with santa.


this is emily pouting in the corner after we left her with the rest of IES.


and this is one of the beautifully lit streets of roma all ready for christmas.


ok i know this is a week late but ill keep posting pictures and entries as i get the chance to do so. these last few days have been incredibly busy as i had 4 finals in two days and am not trying to enjoy rome as much as i can since i only have 4 days left. i also still have a paper due on tuesday so i'm kind of trying to do 1000 things at once. anyhow...i'll post more either this evening or tomorrow.

i'm really sad to have to admit this, but this entry is about my last trip while abroad. This past weekend, collin and i traversed to the Czech Republic where we met two of my best friends from college, Jessie and Marissa. Prague was pretty much amazing. Here's the first picture of Collin and me. unfortunately, we didn't fly out of ciampino, but rather out of fiumicino which was sad in itself. fiumicino is rome's real airport and is much much bigger and it was really sad not flying out of our usual little airport. so here we are waiting for our flight. it looks like i have no hair but in reality, my hair just merged with hers.


so we got to prague at like...6 or so and checked into our hostel and got korean food for dinner. the food itself wasnt too authentic but it was so good considering i havent had real asian food in forever. after, we were on a mission to find a cafe and recreate our wondrous night in sweden but of course didnt find one we liked. we stumbled upon a mall instead and met a russian girl selling all kinds of russian chocolates and sweets and things. of course, we werent in russia but i got some anyway and tried talking to her. it wasnt bad i guess. so then we went back to the hostel (which was absolutely beautiful) and had tea and waited for jess to get in from madrid. when we picked up jess, we, once again headed back to the hostel and got jess into her room after many attempts. we headed to bed fairly early so that we could get up early the next morning to do all kinds of touristy stuff.

the first thing we did was hit up a church and small square near our hostel in the new town. there's me and collin with the church.


we then walked in the general direction of the old town. here's the beginning of wenceslas square.


so we stopped on wenceslas square to get some czech food which was fab and then continued walking to the old town with no agenda. we found like 100 different christmas markets and turned on streets that we just generally thought could have some pretty stuff on it. this is jess and me on one of those random streets with a random church in the background.


so we kept walking and shopping and hit this cute little street that had a slice of pizza handing out flyers. of course collin was ridiculously amused and made us take pictures of her.


and after a short walk we hit the old town square. i have to say it was so so cute with all the christmas trees and christmas markets and things. they sold pretty much everything christmas as well as everything prague and a ridiculous amount of sausage, mulled wine, and ham. there's me and jess in the square.


thats more of the old town square.


and those are the christmas markets in the square.


more of the square.


so after walking around the square for a while we found a petting zoo! it was kind of ridiculius. there was a donkey, 2 sheep, a goat, and a shetland. there are the sheep.


and there's jess with the pony.


and so we kept walking towards the water to get a view of the prague castle and the lesser town. there's a view of the other side of the river.


and this is the beginning of the charles bridge.


so we went back towards the old town square and found the astronomical clock.


that night we went to the symphony which was absolutely beautiful though for some reason i have no pictures. we headed back to the old town square that night to see if we could get some gingerbread (which didnt end up being gingerbread nor did we get it that night). the square was so so pretty when it was lit up, but all the stands were closed.


we stumbled upon bohemia bagel as we were walking home and stopped to have bagels even though we werent hungry or anything of that nature. it was pretty delicious esp since weve been so far removed from bagels for 4 full months. after eating and chillin and running into random people we headed back to our hostel to call it a night.

the next morning we got up early to meet marissa since she arrived in town pretty late the night before. we met her at her friend's metro stop and then we started on our way for the day. the first thing we did was the charles' bridge. we wanted to see the prague castle and wanted to just walk all day so we started by crossing the river on the charles' bridge. there's a view of the lesser town and prague castle from the charles' bridge (with marissa of course).


so we climbed up the hill (which was a little ridiculous but it felt good to conquer) and hit the castle. there's the prague castle.


and there's st. vitus' cathedral.


and that's the inside.


there's one of the amazingly beautiful stained glass windows.


and that's one of the small chapels on the side.


so we found the entrance to the cathedral's tower. it was 248 steps to the top and it was all in one small spiral staircase. of course, the entrance and the exit were the same so going through the staircase was pretty intense. and of course one of the lights wasnt working so there was a whole segment of the staircase where we couldnt see ANYTHING. regardless, here is the view of prague from the top of the tower.


and here's a view of the palaces.


this is a picture of me, marissa, and jess with the spires.


so we headed back down the stairs which was quite interesting and dangerous and then went for a stroll through the complex. here's the straw nativity set that was set up next to the cathedral.


and this is the back of the cathedral.


we also were able to catch the changing of the guards.


so after that we were done with prague castle and ventured down into the new town to find a different bohemia bagel to have lunch at. which was delicious by the way. and then we headed back into the old town via the charles bridge. there's collin and me on the charles bridge with a view of the old town.


so then we headed into the old town square for just a little while before heading up to the jewish quarter. here's a picture of me, jess, and marissa outside of it.


we didn't go in because it was about to close so we went for another stroll along the river to find frank gehry's dancing building, also known as fred and ginger. here's me and collin without the building in the background but in that area.


so there's jess, me, and marissa with the building.


and so shortly after, we headed back to the hostel to chill for a while before going to meet marissa's friend caroline for dinner. here's E&Y prague...which made me really really happy.


and so we met Caroline to have some Czech beer and then Czech food. Goulash was ok, it was just not something i particulary would eat very often. after dinner we wanted to do something involving absinthe so we went to a bar to do B-52s which is layers of kahlua, baileys, and absinthe. there's my shot.


of course i managed to mess it up. i put my straw in too early and it melted (since you light the top of the shot before you take it) anyhow, this is a picture of the 4 of us at the bar.


and there are the remnants of my straw/straws.


here are some random pictures jess took and posted and thought id add here just so everyone can see.










so we returned to rome on saturday afternoon which was perfect cause jessie had finals on monday. i'm in rome for the homestretch now. sorry it took so long to post this but i had all my finals and presentations in two days so i finally now just had time to write this. i'll post our rome activities soon.

poland was really cold.

that's not all i have to say about it, actually. we got to warsaw early in the afternoon on friday and our hostel is right in the center of the city. it was a cute lil place called oki doki and i actually really enjoyed it. it was quite new and clean and had an excellent location...close to the old city and the central station, which were the only 2 points of interest for us. so when we got off the bus, we stopped in all the stores to look for boots and clothes since we passed an H&M, zara, and a bunch of other things right away. of course, we didn't buy anything but it was definitely excellent to have an H&M again. so we checked into our hostel and immediately went for a walk towards the old city. now, warsaw is quite pretty but it's not very old because, during world war II, like 80% of the city was razed. of course, it was all rebuilt in an attempt to revamp the city and is actually super super pretty. here's one of the first churches we encountered.


and there's me with the presidential palace.


that's the beginning of the old city and royal castle square. the red building to the right is the royal castle. what i found really weird about warsaw was that they had pretty lil terraces and lookouts but all of them looked out on like a highway. a really busy one. anyhow, there was one of them to the left but i didnt feel the need to take a picture of it.


that's the royal castle. as we were walking through the square, there were people decorating the tree and stringing lights. it was so cute.


and this is the main square of the old town, called Rynek Starego Miasta.


so the legend is that a fisherman caught a mermaid (syrenka) and the mermaid told the fisherman that if he started a city she would protect it. of course, the city was almost completely demolished during world war II, but you know whatevs. there's a picture of me with the mermaid statue.


and this is the barbakan. i think it's supposed to symbolize fortified walls around the old city. (i'm not really sure but i think that's right.)


and this is the new city. it doesnt look much different from the old city, but the streets are much wider.


and here's a small church we passed along the way. it was really cute and i dunno what it's significance was.


and this is a war memorial in the new city. it was kinda cool to see it lit up at night.


so we walked back into the old city to get back to our hostel and passed the royal castle. it's so pretty when it's lit up at night with a lighted christmas tree for decoration.


and that's warsaw university. there's ridiculous construction going on all on the streets in front of it.


and so we went to a pierogie place for dinner called pierogarnia. it was a cute little hole in the wall place that just served all different kinds of pierorgies. and since everything in poland is so cheap, we got potato soup, a salad, and a dish of pierogies for like 4 dollars. it was kind of amazing.


and this is the palace of culture and nature. it's a stalinist building that completely dominates over the city.


so after dinner and walking around, we headed to bed because we had to get up really early to catch a train to krakow. krakow is a 3 hour train ride from warsaw and we most definitely wanted to hit that up before leaving polska. the next day, we got to krakow around 11 and walked around. the city is really small but is so so cute and ridiculously touristy. it was also december 2, so all the christmas markets had just started. here's cloth hall which is in the middle of their main square, Rynek Glowny.


inside, there are lots of stalls that just sell krakow merchandise, jewelry, handmade fuzzy slippers, and all kinds of silly lil trinkets.


here are more pictures of the main square. the square is actually cut in half by cloth hall.


and this is st. mary's church. inside, the church is absolutely beautiful and a completely different style from most other churches. i couldn't take pictures, though.


on the other side of cloth hall, there was a huge clock tower and the christmas markets. here's me with the clock tower.


within the christmas markets there were so many foodstands to feed all the hungry shoppers. here's one of them grilling meat. lots and lots of meat.


and that's the christmas market which was so cute and sold pretty much everything christmas you could possibly want.


and there's me with my kielbasa. i was so proud of myself that i knew how to order cause i remember like 1 word of russian and its so similar to polish. i ordered "raz kielbasa biela." woot for knowing how to say one white sausage.


so we walked south and found wawel castle. its an enormous castle that sits on the river that was started in the 1000s. it was really pretty but we didn't feel like climbing up there so we walked along the river and looked at it.


there's also a legend that at the southwest edge of the wawel castle there used to live a dragon. one day, a shepherd left the dragon a poisoned sheep. when the dragon ate it, it drank so much water from the river that it drank itself to death. this is the entrance to the cave...it's me with the statue, but the den itself was not open to the public.


so we walked back to rynek glowny and saw these two fujifilm pandas and were unreasonably amused. it was so odd cause we asked them to take a picture and they spoken english. now, we expected it to be a picture of the 4 of us but mine totally snubbed collin and it looks lik we are two couples. woot.


and so we decided to head back to the train station after that and hit st. francis' gate along the way.


that night, we went back to warsaw and had a nice polish dinner as our last meal and then headed back to the hostel to chill and talk for a while. we didn't have to be out very early today because our flight was at 230, so we stayed up late to talk and then slept in today and took our time to get ready. it was altogether an amazing weekend and i really really loved poland.

oh and one more thing i forgot...PJP2 is from krawkow and so they had some paraphernalia. this is the shirt i got.

woot for the best birthday ever. besides that thanksgiving was pretty much amazing, we did the weekend right by traveling to dublin to spend the rest of my birthday weekend there. danielle flew to rome first to be here for thanksgiving and and then we flew up to dublin with collin to meet jess. here's me and collin on the bus on the way into the city.


and there's jess and danielle on the same bus. danielle is showing everyone her man corner.


it took us pretty much the whole day to get to dublin and to get settled in, but once we got there we ate, walked around some, checked into our hostel, and then took another walk around the temple bar area since it was so close to our hostel. we ended up going to this cute lil italian style place called CafeBarDeli...one word. awesome. it was actually quite delectable and since we only were able to nap the night before (2 hours of sleep) we passed out pretty effing early.

dublin is 1 hour behind madrid, milan, and rome, so we gained an hour in the whole ordeal. we got up quite early to have breakfast where danielle was accosted by a toaster and she slowly took her revenge. we got out of the hostel early and took a walk to st. patrick's cathedral, but of course it was closed...the ONE time we get out super early to do everything stuff is closed. so we took pictures from the outside.


we then migrated toward Christchurch which was also closed but was going to open quite soon. here's me, danielle, and jessie outside of Christchurch.


and these are the two sides of the inside of the church.



As always, i lit a candle in this church in memory of all my loved ones who have passed. since we were pretty much the first ones in the church i was the first one to light a candle and my candle was quite lonely on the stand. here i am with my candle.


after the church, we headed over to dublinia...this medieval history/viking exhibit. it was pretty much the most amazing thing ever. before you even go in, they have these cut outs that you can stick your head in. here are the two rotations we did.



inside, they had a scary manequin in medieval costume. there's me, danielle, and jess with the man.


and there's jess with the ambiguous circus animal. we have no idea what that is. i thought donkey jess though trained bear.


and there are jess and danielle doing their black death faces. they were supposed to get a guy in the background but it didnt quite work out for us.


this was supposed to show a food cart in the market place. i couldn't resist and the whole time the dog was growling at me.


and i totally sexually harassed one of the dudes in dublinia. he was fake but he still was not amused.


and there's me, danielle, and collin in the viking ship.


there was also a section on slavery where they had shackles you could try on. we decided to sell jess for white slavery.


and there's collin being a viking/knight. classy.


as we walked towards trinity college, we stumbled upon a cute little cafe place called queen of tarts. it was voted best of dublin multiple times so we stopped in for tea and scones. SO delicious.


we also passed dublin castle which we are unsure what it was for. we didn't go in because collin didn't want to go in unless they had a zara in there. we all predicted they didn't so we kept walking.


we then took a tour of trinity college. it was so so cute and tour guide was meant for masterpiece theater. here's a picture of the first part of the campus.


and there's our tour guide, rory in another part of campus.


we also found my roommate's children. she's destined to marry and have our friend domenico's babies and collin and i found EXACTLY what these kids would look like.


we were able to see the book of kells also, but not pictures of that, unfortunately. so afterwards we headed to the guinness factory which was so so fun. it was 7 floors and kind of ridic. first, here's danielle and me with one of the lil exhibit thingies. we took this picture cause it said something about the head. i dont remember what though.


and there's jess and me with the barrels. they had some message on them about like the roar of raw heat or something silly like that.


and that's the guinness toucan that we did not know about. we were like WHY ARE THERE TOUCANS EVERYWHERE but then we came to learn that the toucan was actually like the main advertising character for a long time. there's one toucan with two guinnesses on his beak.


and there's collin showing me her homeland.


there was also this little area where you could post messages to show you were there. i put up two...one commemorating my amazing birthday weekend. and one showing my staten pride. can you guess which one this is?


and there was a place not as cool as heineken video messages but almost. we took a picture of the 4 of us. so silly...that's the link to it.
http://guinnessstorehouse.bitmove.tv:80/bitmove/guinnessstorehouse/receive.jsp?uid=B0BC2AE8E1ABBD7ABB63D582DC66E426

at the end of the tour, you get a free pint of guiness at this place called the gravity bar which is the highest level. the views of dublin from up there were beautiful even though i'm the only one who really enjoyed my guinness.


when we were leaving, we took our picture with the big guinness sign as everyone does. unfortunately, it's quite dark but here it is.


when we got back to our hotel, there's a huge message board that sits at the front desk to give everyone messages from their callers. of course my message took exactly half the board and said in huge letters: LISA CRUZ...FRANCINE CALLED and the rest of my message about where to meet them and what not. and as i was standing there, ate francine called! yes, we ended up meeting them at the porterhouse where we continued to a delicious lebanese restaurant for dinner. afterwards, we hit up quite a few ridiculously crowded bars where they were so amazing and bought us beers and chatted us up. i love the two of them so so much its kinda scary. i always refer to them as my two cousins even though they're really just my cousin and her husband so many a time i've had to clear up that my cousins aren't married to each other but that i consider them both my cousins even though i'm only actually related to one of them. anyhow, we had a ton of fun going to all the different bars and theyre pretty much amazing. you've made the blog a france and k rod! i love you both so so much.


and here are the 4 of us in the last pub with the dancing man. there was one really really drunk guy in this pub who was trying to dance with everyone. i offered danielle up to 8 euro to go dance with him and even pulled the birthday card but it didnt work. cute picture nonetheless.


ok well that was my wondrous weekend. it was pretty much the best and worst thanksgiving and birthday ever...leaning towards to best. poland next weekend!